Category: Kids


Apr
2016

Pimp My Mommy Van 10 Ways

categories: Blog, Kids

Someone needs to start a Pimp My Mommy Van store. I’d pay some big bucks.  Some of the things on my wish list:

1.) Sound proof barrier between the front and the back seats like in a limo

Probably my husband would like an additional sound proof barrier between the driver and passenger seat, but that would get DENIED. :-p

2.) Self-vacuuming This one is self explanatory

3.) Vending machine that someone comes and stocks for me b/c I’ll forget and it’ll be useless if not.

4.) Seats (all but driver seat) that have the ability to deliver a minor shock.  Minor shock never hurt anyone permanently right?  This can be initiated by the driver when the kids start fighting, or anyone refuses to eat where the driver wants to eat, or anyone complains of the music or otherwise disrupts the peace..

And a voice would come over the intercom saying, “Eh – Try again.” B/c moms shouldn’t have to talk while they drive.. Or ever. Can we just outsource the talking altogether? That could just be a portable voice box that we take with us and push the appropriate button for, “Yes dear”, “Eh – try again”, or “Oh wow – that’s so interesting”.

5.) A little robot that hands people stuff when it falls on the floor b/c this is the least safe of all and I never hand anyone anything while driving which leads to the littlest one screaming her head off which is also probably not a safe driving situation. :-p

6.) Amazon Echo built into the back of the car to answer all the millions of questions the kids ask – this way the kids can actually learn something instead of me making stuff up..

Isn’t it funny how they ask some really hard to answer questions when you are running really late for something and you are trying to remember the millions of things you are supposed to be bringing? It’s like why are they thinking about why the Earth is round when they are supposed to be getting buckled? Think about the buckle and the sound of it snapping together.  Or my favorite: How do sheep born babies?  I’ve actually gotten this question and it stumps me everytime..

It should also be programmable to say “mm-hmmm” and “okay” alternately whenever there is a non-question b/c you know they are speaking so quietly in the car that there is no way you’d hear them over the engine anyway. At least that’s what my kids do. At the library and at fancy restaurants (the rare times we choose to torture ourselves) they run and yell but in the car or when they are saying something that I’m really interested in, they squeak like a mouse. I’ll never understand it.

7.) Headphones that come down from the ceiling and land magically on the kid’s heads

Like we really need to reinforce the idea that things fall magically from the sky on command but in this case it might be necessary. If they get their hands on the headphones they will break instantly or disappear into thin air.

8.) TV screens that don’t break after a month – anyone else have this problem?

9.)  A toilet because one of the kids always has to go to the restroom.  This one was suggested by a friend of mine which, of course, I agreed with – this has to be on the list.  Also, you should be able to eject the contents of this toilet if someone is riding up on your tail..

10.) An eject button which would eject the kids out of the car and safely onto the sidewalk with all their stuff. Otherwise, it takes for-ever for the kids to get out of the car. I have one kid that purposefully waits until everyone else is out of the car before she even attempts to unbuckle her seat belt. This is especially bad in the winter or when it’s raining or when you are running late in the school drop off line and holding up all the parents behind you who are also running late. How cool would that be to be able to push the eject button? It would be like: “Love you guys!” Eject. Mom drives off waving and smiling. That would go so much smoother than, “Ok, guys hope you have a good day! There’s a long line of cars behind us waiting so try to speed it up. Why aren’t you already out of the car? You are going to be so late. What is taking so long?!? [Kids making sure their backpacks are perfectly centered on their back.] Get out. Seriously, guys you have to get out! Love you! [Mom drives off frazzled]”.

Did I miss anything? As you can see, I’ve been thinking a lot about this – dreaming about it actually every time I get in the car.. And we spend a lot of time in the car – don’t we moms? Shuttling the little people back and forth and here and there. We deserve to get our vans (or whatever you drive) pimped. :-p  If you saw the state of my van, you would agree. I recently spent a couple of weeks driving with gnats flying around my head because my kids shoved food in one of the receptacles in the back and I refused to acknowledge it.  If I had one of those sound proof barriers, I suppose that would keep the gnats in the back as well.  :-p

Hmm – I think I would live in my car if I could get these upgrades. A mom can dream can’t she.. What else do we “need”?


Mar
2016

Giving Jar for Girl Scout Philanthropy Badge or Cute Everyday Piggybank

categories: Home Decor, Kids

I was recently in charge of a Girl Scout meeting for my oldest girl scout to help the girls earn their Philanthropy badge.  Well, me and my daughter were in charge but you know how that goes…  😉  We needed an activity for the girls during the meeting and I felt like this giving jar was the perfect idea.  This jar is a place where they can save up their coins to donate to a charity of their choosing.  We talked about what charities already exist out there and about how a dime doesn’t buy much here but in a third world country could buy a child a breakfast of oatmeal and such. I also had some magazines and had them cut out some wants vs needs and glue them to poster boards but I would say they were more excited about the jars.

What you’ll need:

sponge brushes (to paint on the mod podge) Found a pack of them at Wal-Mart for cheap.
mason jars (pint-sized – got from Wal-Mart b/c they had some that didn’t have any engravings on them)
tissue paper (multi-colored)
mod podge
card stock (multi-colored for the lids)
box cutter (to cut the slit in the lid for the coins)

The girls were excited to make their jars.  I cut the circles out of tissue paper beforehand.  At first, I bought a circle punch from Michael’s and that was worthless.  It kept tearing the tissue paper and not cutting then eventually broke from too much use (or frustration on my part?!?!) so I had to abandon that idea.  In the end, I found the best way to cut out the circles was to fold the tissue paper over itself multiple times and trace a 1.5 inch circle which I first cut out of card stock (using my whole punch when it was still alive).  Then, I traced that on the folded tissue paper and cut out multiple circles at a time that way.  You will need some strong scissors – I used the kitchen shears b/c I wanted to cut as many circles as humanly possible at one time..  :-p  They don’t have to be perfect – no one will notice..

First, you paint mod podge on a section of the jar using a sponge brush (it dries quick so just one small section at a time), then stick the circles to it, then paint the mod podge over the circles and repeat.  It is pretty easy.  Just keep overlapping the circles so that every inch of the jar is covered.  For the top, I just cut a circle out of card stock and used a box cutter to make the coin slit in it.  Wallah!  Pretty cute, right?  You could also just use it for a pencil holder or you could do the same thing with a vase from the dollar store.  Whatever you want. I need to make one using different colored tissue paper for my office..20160326_171604 (2)

20160326_171610 (2)

 

Here’s a link to the video that shows you the tehnique:

 

And here’s a website where I initially found the philanthropy badge information and the common sense jar.  I kind of combined the two ideas:

http://followthejrleader.blogspot.com/2014/03/brownie-philanthropy-badge.html


Dec
2015

Third Grade Winter Party

categories: Kids

I’m planning my third grader’s “winter” party this year.  It’s a little challenging finding winter related things that don’t have to do with Christmas – thought I’d share the plan here in case anyone else could find this information useful.

Craft 1: Beanie snowmen:  We will make snowmen (and women :-p) out of socks, rice, rubberbands, buttons.  I’ll prepare the base snowperson (don’t want rice all over the floor of the classroom :-/ ) ahead of time and they will decorate, etc.  This video is basically where I got the inspiration and I’m going to do make the base snowperson the exact same way, but I’m not going to use pins in the classroom b/c I don’t know if the teachers or parents would like that.  I’m planning to use some heavy duty glue dots that I found at Joann’s. They were $7, but Joann’s often has coupons for 50%off, etc. These glue dots are non-toxic and stick very well – stuff doesn’t come off unless you yank it. I also bought googly eyes and orange pipe cleaners for the nose ( you can just poke the pipe cleaner straight through the sock – no glue dot required there). I found adult male tube socks at Walmart for a really good price (10 pair in one pack) for about $7.  One pair will make 2 snowmen so not bad.  The only other thing I’m adding is that I’m going to get some Christmas socks from the dollar store and cut them up to make ugly Christmas sweaters for the snowmen – gotta inject some humor in this somewhere!  :-p

Here’s a pic of how ours turned out (Pinterest fail or win?):

BeanieSnowman

Craft 2: Pipe cleaners and beads to make snowflakes.  I’m going to bring an example and make the snowflakes out of pipe cleaners ahead of time so the kids just have to add the beads. I bought relatively big sized beads (pony beads work well) b/c if the beads are too small it would take way too long.

Game 1: Cup stacker – stack 28 cups into a pyramid in under 1 minute.  Using 28 winter cups, the students will try to make a pyramid in under a minute – this will probably take a few rounds for any one kid to get – takes a while to figure out how many to use as the base.  I’ll bring 2 sets of 28 cups so 2 kids can do this at the same time.  Or we can just have 1 kid at a time and if they master it pretty quickly, we can add on cups.  We’ll probably need to do this one on the floor b/c the desks may not be big enough to hold the pyramid.

Game 2: Snowball transfer – transfer snowballs from one bucket to another using only your mouth.  Using ping pong balls and 2 small winter buckets, we’ll have the kids transfer the balls from one bucket to the other using only their hands.  Initially, we’ll have the buckets right next to each other but we can make it more challenging by moving them further apart if they master it quickly.  One kid will go at a time.  I’ll bring more than 21 spoons, so each kid can keep their spoon – don’t want to transfer germs or anything.

Game 3: Winter charades – I’ll make a set of cards with winter words on them and the kids can act out one at a time.  They have one minute to get someone to guess and the person that guess correctly gets a point. If we run out of cards, I’ll bring some extra (non-winter) charade cards from home so they can keep playing, but hopefully we’ll have enough.

All the games will be minute to win it style so you’ll need to make sure you have a stopwatch function on your phone or something like that so you can time them – I just have a Clock app on mine and that does most everything.


Nov
2015

Realty Kids

categories: Kids

The kids make do when you have to renovate. They love using leftovers. Here’s a pic of what they did with baseboard scraps. They really do like to help, but unfortunately, I really do like to focus. So, it’s hard thinking up ways to keep them occupied besides the movie player. This was one. Also, giving them damp rags and toothbrushes with a cup of water to scrub grout is another one that I’ve used. They just want to feel like they are helping. Although, that backfired with my three year old b/c after she scrubbed dirty grout for a while, she ended up putting the dirty toothbrush in her mouth. 🙁 Oh well, you win some you lose some. Usually, we head to the library and pick out a ton of movies before going to work on a property. They use our portable movie player and that entertains them for a while. But, then you have to get creative..

Blog_RealtyKids